Gang Film The Warriors Sparks Violence

Art met life when the 1979 film The Warriors, about New York City street gangs, incited three killings. The first incident occurred Feb. 12 during a showing of the film at a drive-in movie theater in Palm Springs, Calif., when members of a black youth gang known as the Blue Coats clashed with a white youth gang known as The Family. One member of The Family, 19-year-old Marvin Kenneth Eller, was shot and killed. The next night in Oxnard, Calif., a fight broke out in the lobby of a theater after The Warriors had played. An 18-year-old named Timothy Gitchel was stabbed to death. Reports of the incident say Gitchel, his brother and two friends, were surrounded by a group of at least 15 other youths who were suspected of drinking and smoking prior to the incident. The third killing on Feb. 15 did not take place in a movie theater, but was clearly related to the film. Several members of a gang from Dorchester, Mass. — two of whom had just come from a screening of the film — got into an argument with 16-year-old Marty Yakubowicz. One of the gang members yelled a line from The Warriors (“I want you!”) before attacking Yakubowicz with a knife. He died six hours later. In response to the killings, some 200 theaters nationwide installed security guards and many others refused to screen the film. At the time of the incident, the film’s editor, David Holden, pushed back against the outcry against the film, telling People magazine, “If someone comes to a movie with a gun, who’s at fault?”